About Will King

Posts by Will King:

I watched the movie “Chef” at The Everyman in Maida Vale last night. If you haven’t seen the movie, I won’t spoil it for you, but as I watched it, I reckon it’s a modern metaphor for how businesses can fail, restart and succeed. In short, it has all the ingredients (sorry) for business success in the modern age.

Keep It Fresh. In the movie, the Chef (who was once pretty avant garde – and gets hired for being avant garde – then spends years working in an ace kitchen for an owner, serving up what was once avant garde, but then (after years) isn’t. Sure, it still tastes nice, and people like it, but it’s lost the reason people first came to the restaurant to eat it. Enter a food critic, who pans it on twitter, and… Well – like I said, I won’t spoil the plotline. Lesson here, is don’t just keep making what you have to make, or have made in the past. Keep reinventing your menu of products or services, to always keep on the cutting edge (sorry) of your sector. Otherwise, people who once loved you for being new and different, lose their appetite for you if you keep serving the same old. For us, although we know our AlphaGel, a multi-award winning shaving gel over many years (launched in 1995) – is a great shaving gel, we also want to try and bring along better, hence the development of the soon-to-be-launched Shave+Shield – a shave gel that doubles up as a moisturiser post shave (ie you don’t have to wash it off).

If you’ve Burnt it, Bin it. Half way through the movie, the Chef’s son (who hasn’t been spending much time with his Dad due to being separated from his wife) is enrolled by Dad to help him clean out the inside of his food truck, and then help him cook ‘on the line’. The success of any food business is serving consistency and quality, time and time again (“like a robot” as Chef says) – and if you don’t serve to a consistently high standard, then people will be disappointed. The son burns one of the Cuban sandwiches, but is still prepared to serve it “because we haven’t paid for it (the business has been bankrolled by his mum’s ex-husband, complicated – I know). Chef rightly takes his son aside, and explains in no uncertain terms, you must never serve food (or sell products) you know aren’t as good as they good be. The son “gets it”. For us, we fell into this trap for a number of reasons which I won’t go into, with our first 5 blade razor, Azor 5 we launched in early 2011. In 2008, we’d launched our original 4 blade razor, the Azor to good acclaim, and had built up a good vibe about it (“shave closer, longer, for less”). However, we were under pressure from a number of areas, to add another blade (Fusion has 5 blades, as does Hydro). So, although I’d been rather scathing of “how many blades do you need to shave with…?” we succumbed and launched Azor 5. Truth be told, the shave wasn’t a step-up in particular from Azor 4, and as we’d also changed the handle design, to make it weightier, that had issues too. In short, compared to our recently launched Hyperglide, which is an absolute Michelin Starred level of razor, Azor 5 was not what we should have launched, even though it was a ‘good’ razor (and many hundreds of thousands of people use it!)

Create a Storm in a Tweet cup. Finally, in the film, whilst Chef is great at cooking up a storm, there’s no point cooking if no one’s there to enjoy it! The 10 year old son delivers a masterclass in what we term ‘smarketing’ at King of Shaves, or ‘social media marketing’. This requires a number of components to work, and how this happens ‘at scale’ in the film is exactly how it can happen in the real world. Firstly, following the restaurant critic’s review of the food (bad) which he tweets out, the Chef, who takes great pride in his cooking tweets the critic back letting the critic know his thoughts (which he thinks is a private message or DM – but of course, is on the public timeline). So, this exchange gets RT’d by the critic, starts to go viral and Chef (who’s had his twitter account set up by his son) gets lots of followers. He then gets what we call a ‘publicity point’, when the critic returns to eat again, has a bust up with the chef, which gets video’d and posted online. Causing all manner of hiatus.

The son then spends the rest of the film capturing, tweeting & curating the ‘journey’ of his Dad, from cleaning up his food truck, to its ensuing road-trip and ending up where they started, in LA – the van’s visit now anticipated by the tens of thousands of followers, ensuring an unbelievable stream of customers. Sounds unlikely. I don’t think so at all. Publicity is the oxygen of success, and by using social media to engage with your diners, let them know where you’ll be, and when – well – as long as your product is great, you’ll succeed. The icing on the cake is that the critic returns and… Well, you’ll have to watch the film to see whether the ending is a sour or sweet one.

To summarise, A) have passion for what you do and keep reigniting that passion, B) don’t serve up a bad product – ever – and C) help people engage with you, your story and your business – for word of mouth customers – or word of mouse customer (even better) are ones that will stay with you forever.

There’s a great saying famously coined by Bill Clinton, “It’s the Economy, Stupid”.

There’s another saying – used in sales training courses and the like – “Keep it Simple, Stupid” or KISS. If you ‘keep things simple’ then the more likely it is people will understand and engage with you. Now, there’s a lot of complexity in keeping things simple (just take a look at the inside of an iPhone!) but “KISS” is exactly what our beautifully redesigned, user friendlysubscription site is!

Not only can you shop for your favourite products easily and simply, but when you’ve created your account, you can manage it online. When it comes to our new subscription offers, again, we have given you the flexibility to pause your sub (if you’ve slowed down on the shaving) and restart it. We for sure don’t want to be sending you through package after package of cartridges, so you get fed up and cancel on us!

You’ll also find our highly popular ‘Bulk Buys’on our website too. If you know you love shaving like a King, but want to s(h)ave some money, then these are ideal for you. Even Hyperglide is now on our ‘Bulk Buy’ page too.

You may have read recently, that we now accept Bitcoin, and of course are working on bringing our site to different countries around the world where King of Shaves is sold.

So, KISS goodbye to store visits and sign up to the ‘Smart way to Shave’here! Shave, Save, SIMPLE!

For 21 years, I’ve been privileged to run King of Shaves, and observe the happenings of a truly unusual consumer product sector. In 1993, the world was a different place – men wore suits and ties, shaved with a twin blade razor and used white foam. But one thing has remained constant. Gillette’s stranglehold on global sales of razors and blades.

Perhaps, until now. I sense a tipping point happening right now, when the balance of power will dynamically shift, from the ‘old guard’ to the ‘new guard’ and hugely in favour of the consumer.

Here’s why.

In 2003, we started work on launching a new razor, due to all the attendant issues involving patents (filing them and not infringing others) it took until 2008 to launch our Azor 4. At that time, Gillette, having relied on a few patents filed in the late 80’s & mid 90’s (three basically) had pulled out what looked like an unassailable lead in shaving, leaving Schick Wilkinson Sword for dust, as they stuck with their ‘stacked blade’ cartridge architecture, whilst Gillette made the most of their ‘angle iron’ open architecture (first debuted on Sensor in 1991).

But, we live in unusual times. Enter the ‘bearded hipster’ and an LA based stand-up comic.

BOOM.

We were at the ‘peak’ of clean shaven-ness in 2003, a couple of years after the tragic events of 9/11 – when beards were associated with bad guys. Between 2005 up until early last year, we then experienced Hollywood A-Listers sporting beards/stubble, a 5 year global economic recession, the growth of social media & connectivity (and opinion, trend sharing at scale) and growing push-back against the price of system razor cartridges, notably Gillette’s 5 blade Fusion & Fusion ProGlide.

In 2012, the entrance of Dollar Shave Club (A Great Shave For A $1 A Month) called out all what was wrong with the market leader’s approach. For sure, the cartridges didn’t necessarily deliver ‘quite’ as good a shave as Gillette’s flagship products (ultimately, the person shaving is the judge of that) but what DSC did do so consummately was to create a community of people who eschewed most everything the market leader stood for, including the insane expense of its cartridges, it’s advertising and a whole lot more).

At King of Shaves, we’ d been tirelessly working away on launching our next generation razor, which deployed superhydrophilic technology on its cartridge face to allow consumers to ‘just add water’ and shave (after all, mobile phones don’t have buttons now, do they?) and this time last year, an East Coast (NYC) based start-up – Harry’s – launched its stylish take on shaving, based around a different sort of community values, preferring a shaving ‘plan’ rather than subscription, then raising over $100m to buy the German based manufacturer (which supplies supermarket private label blades throughout Europe) to secure its supply chain.

When we launched Hyperglide in mid-January, we got huge press coverage and great reviews – having GENUINELY innovated in the space, eschewing vibrations and other nonsense, to concentrate the shave comfort as well as closeness via our Hyperglide tech. It’s well worth pointing out that pretty much ALL other razors in the market use a 1976 ‘Lubrastrip’ technology, including all of Gillette’s products. We ZAGGED 180 degrees from them (in fact, in pretty much everything we’ve ever done we’ve done it different) and introduced what I believe, will presage a genuine change in what a high-performance system razor cartridge looks like (we even have a HypergliDE ‘old school’ razor being tested).

It was only when we saw what was happening in the market, in the UK and USA, with Gillette’s sales not just down, but substantially down in their flagship system razor space, that we knew this combination of Beards + Subs + Economy had dealt a potentially lethal combination of blows.

Writing this right now (and this is my personal opinion, remember) I think the razor & blade space is in a pivotal space. On the one hand, I see Gillette’ Fusion cartridges discounted by 50% on Amazon in the UK, something unheard of a few years back, and for sure something that would likely NEVER happen at a big box retailer

Dollar Shave are claiming over 5% US market share in America, with 600,000 subscribers.

And Gillette have launched what I can only describe as a ‘more of our same’ response, in Flexball, a razor handle that simply pivots, sort of using a dyson-inspired ‘ball’.

It’s on sale now in the USA, sitting on retailers shelves in simply massive numbers, and to me, represents a ‘last ditch attempt’ to reverse their sales decline. As Gillette are pretty much ‘the market’ – if they’re down, the market’s down, and this has a huge effect on retailers. The price it’s being launched at, looks to me violently loss-leading, and I guess (they hope) once bought, so the purchase of refill cartridges will follow (remember, not discounted…)

I’m note so sure. As more and more people experience Hyperglide (with or without prep) I think they’ll recognise that this is a great razor, and one to stick with. As more and more people gawp in disbelief at the huge marketing spends being deployed by Gillette behind Flexball, and their primary Fusion franchise, they’ll look even more closely at ‘how much a shave should be’ and continue to flock to Dollar Shave in the USA (and of course ourSUB in the UK, which now features Hyperglide at just £5.99/month including VAT and delivery P&P too.

In short, we could see one of the biggest consumer product FMCG market resets ever staring at us in the next few years.

In 2007, and I’ve made this point many times in my presentations, Nokia had 61% of the world-wide mobile phone market. Blackberry were the smartphone of choice for the corporate executive. Even Sony Ericsson had nearly 28% UK market share.

Where are they now?

It’s for sure down to us at King of Shaves, along with the new asymmetric competitors in this space, and others to continue to disrupt and bring the consumer better. I’m proud that since 1993 we’ve brought desperately needed competition to this space. That we had the guts 10 years ago to start looking at bringing competition into the monopoly – sorry – cosy duopoly – of razors. That 5 years ago, in 2009 my team AAndy at King of Shaves not only discovered, but commercialised at scale, our patented superhydrophilic tech. And that a guy in LA debuted a $5000 video pointing out all that was wrong in the world of wet shave.

The only balls I’ll be buying into in the next few weeks, will be being kicked around in Brazil.

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Learn more about the King of Shaves range of shaving and skincare products for men and women at shave.com. Shop online at our secure store. The views expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of The King of Shaves Company Ltd. By viewing and interacting with this blog you agree to our terms of use. E&OE.